I made this here paper maché axe prop for my 2019 Halloween party — theme to be announced soon! It was really easy; here’s how I did it…

A little background: you may remember I made a way-oversized axe prop a while back for my Axe Man skeleton costume (why would you remember that?). So I’d already learned a few lessons from that project, and I decided to do this one a little differently. Along with being oversized, I intentionally designed that axe to be a little bit exaggerated in its proportions; almost a little cartoony. Read more…

Most of my sculpture projects start with a base of foam board shapes connected with tape and/or glue. I made up this technique for creating sturdy box shapes in any kind of shape or size, and I use it for almost every project, with some slight variations. This technique works great for anything from very geometric shapes to completely irregular custom shapes, as long as they’re flat on two sides. Here’s what I do…

I had a lot of fun making a 15″ Skeleton Krewe doubloon recently, so I decided to make a much larger version! I considered a few different sizes based on the different materials I had to work with, and landed on 33″ in diameter as the size for this big one.

Many of the steps for making this giant 33″ doubloon were the same for how I made the 15″ version, so I’ll refer to that article several times here rather than type the same stuff again. Read more…

This is part four of my skull mask project with rotating gears and marching skeletons. See parts one, two, and three.

Installing the hard hat

Almost all of my big paper maché masks are mounted on a hard hat. Hard hats are great because they’re cheap and they provide a lot of comfort and stability in a big mask. I usually saw off some parts of the hard hat for each mask depending on its shape, in order to reduce weight and to help the hard hat fit in the mask as well as possible. Read more…

This is part three of my skull mask project with rotating gears and marching skeletons. See parts one and two.

Building the skull shape

In part one I built the whole mechanism with the gears inside of a big circular wall; this would become the outer wall of the skull mask at around ear-level (not my ears, the skull’s ears — uh, wait a minute…). Read more…

This is part two of my skull mask project with rotating gears and marching skeletons. See part one here.

Dancing skeletons

I drew all 29 of the dancing skeletons at a larger size (about 6″ tall) on sketchbook paper, keeping the designs as simple as possible since I’d be re-painting them by hand at a much smaller size. I scanned ’em and cleaned ’em up in Photoshop, reduced them to about 2″ tall, and printed them out. Read more…

Welcome to the newest installment in my ongoing quest to kill myself with overly complicated art projects! For the 20th anniversary of Skeleton Krewe (my seventh year officially with the Krewe) I decided to make a paper maché skull mask with moving parts! Yikes! The mask has a crank and gears and 29 little skeleton figurines representing my fellow Krewe members; a sort of best-of selection of our skull masks and skeleton outfits over the last two decades. Here’s how I made the thing!

This year for Skeleton Krewe’s 20th anniversary, my fiancée decided to make a mask of our mascot, Skelly the skeleton horse! And I’ve decided to steal it for blog content. This is her second big skull mask project, and she let me be her assistant!

The real Skelly is a fiberglass horse on wheels; she used to one of many gold horses that were mounted on top of tractors that pulled the floats in the Mardi Gras superkrewe of Rex. Read more…

I’ve been marching with Skeleton Krewe every Mardi Gras since 2013, and every year we give out either wooden nickels or metallic doubloons with the Krewe’s logo on them. This Mardi Gras the group is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and I decided to make this giant-sized doubloon; I’m not even sure what I’m gonna do with it yet! Here’s how I made the thing…

This year for Skeleton Krewe‘s 20th anniversary we were encouraged to make and wear anything with an “XX” to commemorate the occasion, whether it was something incorporated into our skull mask, or our costume, our makeup, etc. I decided to make this rosette-style medal to accentuate the skeleton suit I wear every year. It was fun to make! Here’s how I did it…

One thing about working with paper maché is that it’s very time consuming, because you’ve gotta do lots of layers and they all take a long time to dry; most of my big masks and sculptures need at least seven layers of paper to be thick and sturdy enough. I’m always looking for any kind of shortcuts that might speed up the process of building up a surface that’s nice and strong, while also keeping the cost of materials in mind.

I’ve always used paper maché for my big masks and sculptures, and although I really enjoy the paper maché process it can be very time-consuming. A friend of mine mentioned that she recently tried plaster cloth — aka plaster wrap, plaster of paris strips, craft wrap, etc — and she said it saved her a ton of time. She’d made a couple Halloween masks with the stuff and they definitely looked great; she said she was so happy with the results that she’d never go back to paper maché. Huh! I was skeptical, but intrigued.

A few years ago I made up this method for cutting out precise shapes with craft foam, to create 3d relief shapes on a lot of my various sculpture projects.

Craft foam, aka wonder foam, is a soft rubbery material that I often describe as being similar to a yoga mat, but much thinner. You can buy it in any arts and crafts store, and it comes in tons of colors. Read more…

Spray paint is a big part of my process for creating most of my paper maché masks and sculptures, and it can be a huge time-saver when you’re working on any large shape. Here are my tricks and tips for working with spray paint, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro!

I made this oversized paper maché wolf mask for Halloween 2018! It was a rush project without a lot of planning, and I took a lot of shortcuts, but it still came out pretty cool (but, uh, way bigger than I was thinking)! Here’s how I made the thing…

I’m still recovering from Halloween, and this is a thing I’ve been dying to post about for weeks: Lee from History Bones sent me her sculpture of my Axe Man costume! Holy shit! Incredible! The whole thing is not even 7″ tall! The mask comes off! And the likeness underneath is uncanny!

Making the witch’s oversized broom

I needed the witch’s broom prop to be much longer than a real broom, so I started with two metal mop handles from the dollar store. I connected these at the ends with a couple layers of shipping tape wrapped around, which felt a little flimsy, and then I rolled a piece of construction paper tightly around the connection point, and then I wrapped some more shipping tape around that. Read more…